Rebuilding Pornland

Show a male turkey a wooden spoon with a fake female turkey’s head attached, and he’ll immediately try to seduce it, fanning out his tail and gobbling as furiously as he can.

Restrain your laughter. After all, show a male human a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and he might disappear into the bathroom for a few minutes. Sometimes all it takes to stir the blood is a reproduction of a woman. (Or a man. But as we delve into our review, we’ll be discussing porn from Dines’ primarily hetero perspective.)

These days, Victoria’s Secret catalogs are pretty tame. Few people would think of them as pornographic, although some spreads do resemble early Playboy issues. The bar for pornography is set pretty high.

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Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College and author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, argues that our culture’s fondness for more explicit material is responsible for a multitude of sins, not least of which is the sexuality hijacking mentioned in her title.

Which all sounds pretty grim, you have to admit, and indeed is all the grimmer for the chilling body of evidence Dines assembles to support it.

She cites the comically overdone sexist and racist stereotypes that pervade the standard porn “narrative.” Beyond that, many projects that push boundaries even further have made an art form of misogyny and degradation. For example, Paul F. Little, a porn producer who goes by the name Max Hardcore, has a line of extremely violent work that depicts rape, humiliation, urination, and vomiting—all starring women dressed as prepubescent girls.

But what’s most worrisome to me is the amount of seemingly unstoppable capitalist power that has built up behind the adult entertainment industry. The estimated worldwide market for porn is worth around $100 billion, and shows no signs of shrinking or even slowing down. Pay-per-view porn in hotels is worth $500 million all by itself, and, by some estimates, home cable customers spend an equal amount.

Dines’ beef is not only with the industry. With just as much vitriol, she goes after those who defend porn as harmless, or as a natural part of the male sex drive, or even as a positive tool for embracing human sexuality. Why do we assume, Dines asks, that men (or anyone) can so easily separate the images they see in pornography from the relationships they have with real people—sexual or otherwise? Isn’t it proven, she argues, that violent video games impact human behavior?

Dines argues that porn and other media inscribe their values upon us in a way that’s out of our control. Another camp would argue, however, that most viewers are capable of thoughtfully decoding the messages in media, and forming their own opinions about it.

Both positions have a great deal to recommend them. Television studies have shown that the more TV we watch, the more firmly we buy into gender stereotypes. Education isn’t a factor—even people with cultural studies degrees are susceptible. Other studies have shown that we interpret mass media in ways that diverge from its apparent “message.”

Crucially, these latter findings apply to highly generic media such as romance novels and episodes of the old Adam West Batman—media with the type of predictable narratives that, Dines says, make porn so hard to resist. Yet people can resist these messages—at least partially. To turn Dines’ own question on her, why suppose things are any different for porn consumers?

We may be passive dupes at times. But we’re capable of being active media connoisseurs as well. Indeed, Dines’ book is full of examples of porn consumers thoughtfully dissecting both the semiotics of porn and its effect on their lives, relationships, and sexual preferences—it’s just that she doesn’t acknowledge those examples as the sort of critical consumption that she then swears porn users can’t possibly engage in. (Maybe she should read more Tom Matlack.)

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A truly compelling critique of porn culture needs to accommodate the tendency in its consumers to objectively examine their own habits. The porn industry doesn’t strap its consumers into chairs with their eyelids stretched open, Clockwork Orange–style, the way Dines seems to suggest.

It seems porn users really are weaving their interpretations of these images into larger narratives about their personalities, sexual preferences, and attitudes toward eroticism and the women in their lives.

The men who tell Dines that they picture porn stars while having sex with their girlfriends—and that doing so makes them feel terrible—are not having their “existing notions of sexuality” cemented by porn, as Dines claims. Rather, they’re struggling to reconcile the many conflicting notions of sexuality presented to them.

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It seems to me that the porn industry, however predatory and destructive it may be, is only one half of the problem; the growing population of willing-to-go-along-with-it johns is the other. So the question we really need to ask is not how best to fight the porn producers (Dines’s solution), but how best to bring about change in the porn consumers,who, while they can explain all the negative effects porn has on them and their relationships, can continue beating off to it as if nothing were the matter.

“Porn is a funhouse mirror reflecting whatever we want to see in it,” Susannah Breslin concludes in her essay “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?” “If Porn Valley is America’s dream factory, it bears keeping in mind that its dreams are all yours.”

Pornographers ought to be held responsible for abuses. Industry practices, even for amateur online productions, must be more stringently regulated. Working to legitimize the industry, as Jezebel writer Megan Carpentier argues, will help, in addition to other benefits: “a significant decrease” in exploitation, and “increased opportunities for women to participate in the higher-earning aspects of the production.”

But real change has to come from consumers, who can vote with their wallets and their cursors. Change has to come from dialogue, open discussion, and consumer education, so the porn we choose to watch, as Carpentier says, “is made with the consent and pleasure of the participants.”

Dines would say, of course, that if I suggest we don’t entirely eliminate porn, I’m just buying into the culture it has helped create, and am facilitating and condoning an irredeemable form of exploitation. Porn has brainwashed me and hijacked my sexuality, and it ain’t about to let go.

But while that might make for good copy, it effectively shuts down any possibility of debate, or, for that matter, of achievable change. Defining something as evil isn’t going to fix it. And if we suppress it, refuse to acknowledge it, and hand it over to the bowels of the unregulated Internet underworld, it can’t get anything but worse.

About Andrew Ladd

Andrew Ladd is the blog editor for Ploughshares. His work also has appeared in Apalachee Review, CICADA, Memoir Journal, Paper Darts, and The Rumpus, among others, and his first novel, What Ends (New Issues Press, January 2014), was the winner of the 2012 AWP Prize in the Novel. Follow Andrew on Twitter @agoodladd.

Just after you’ve described the “extremely violent work that depicts rape, humiliation, urination, and vomiting—all starring women dressed as prepubescent girls, you tell us, Andrew Ladd, that “what’s most worrisome to me is the amount of seemingly unstoppable capitalist power that has built up” around pornography. Where is your compassion? It is a frightening world that girls and women have to navigate. A good portion of porn promotes rape and abuse, and you can’t tell me that this doesn’t translate into some of the horrible assaults on women that we hear and read about every day. I am astounded by… Read more »

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Erin

6 years 8 months ago

On one hand, you do have more women in positions of management within the industry. On the other hand, you have more graphic and demeaning porn more easily accessable then any point in history. Where it’s become normalized for 12 year old bys to know what ATM is. And that’s all in an age where female management within the industry is on the up. And you still have a ratio of women who are more subjected to negative sexual stereotypes through porn. Again, in an age where female management in porn is higher. So, is the fact that more women… Read more »

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TI_7

6 years 9 months ago

I’ve read only as far as “Isn’t it proven that violent video games impact human behavior?”

Go and read the research – no, it isn’t. Therefore this entire piece is based on nothing more than speculation.

How do you know for a fact that actresses and models in porn have consented, though? What’s the baseline? Where do you prove it? The mere existence of a consent interview has been manipulated, as we discovered when the police shut down that man keeping a woman as his slave. He put her in a mainstream BDSM magazine while she was actually enslaved, and I think she even did a consent interview….that she, it turned out, wasn’t consenting to. If you want dialogue, I think you have to struggle with these questions. You also have to differ between legal consent… Read more »

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Steven

6 years 8 months ago

With this line of thinking you would need to question any supposed consent. After all, in any situation (whether or not it’s sexual) a woman could possibly have been coerced. At what point is it disrespectful to not take a woman at her word? I have no doubt that some women have been abused in the pornography industry, but I question the notion that I should always wonder whether or not coercion has taken place just because it has happened to some women working with different pornographers. To your second point, maybe it would do us better to remove the… Read more »

Great point. Sometimes it’s easy to tell. When lawyer/Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald published a bit against Max Hardcore’s prison sentencing, he wrote, “There was no suggestion that any serious violence was ever inflicted or that the adult actors in the film were anything other than completely consensual.” But he’d never seen a film, and a quick Google search could have found him clear cases of coercion, lack of consent, or unexpected abuse and foul play in MH films. There are scenes where actresses clearly say “No,” “Stop,” or “You’re hurting me,” and Max says, “I don’t care, that’s the point”—and… Read more »

I don’t know what is more disturbing; the fact that you are taking Dines seriously, or the fact that you all in some twisted manner agree with her. The porn industry is better now than it ever was. Women are assuming roles of management and production in the industry. The production companies are accepting responsibility for the health and welfare of their employees, Now, more than ever; the porn industry has begun to transform into a vehicle for individual choice. Yes, there still needs to be more change, but Dines is calling for nothing less than a “jihad” to gain… Read more »

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Doctress Julia

6 years 8 months ago

No man that watches porn will ever have a relationship with me. Porn is inherently misogynist and exploitative. Women suffer and even die making it. No good man supports this industry. The lie that ‘all men like porn’ is just an excuse to keep hurting women.

Demosthenes: I think you and Andrew are saying the exact same things! If you get to the end of the article, you’ll notice that he makes the exact same argument as you do about women in management and the actors’ health and welfare. He disagrees vehemently with Dines’ blanket statement about porn consumers’ sexual behavior. And he cites examples of porn that exemplifies pleasure over exploitation. I’m glad you noticed the Porn Stars Speak Out link. It was used primarily to demonstrate the spread of STDs due to lax regulations, which is certainly the industry’s problem. Drug addiction is another… Read more »

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Pennywise

6 years 9 months ago

bullshit. the stuff in this article IS true. there are many many studies about the serious negative effects of pornography for both men and women.
I think was is most disturbing is how many people think that porn is harmless and even HEALTHY!
all men enjoy porn. Its the “good men” that stay away from it.

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David Wise

6 years 9 months ago

“What you resist persists,” as Carl Jung once said. Someone should have told Bishop Eddie Long and many Republicans that. Accept the fact that men are dirty, filthy beasts. Hee, hee

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Tom Matlack

6 years 9 months ago

Good stuff Andrew. Of course the problem goes a lot deeper than an epidemic of guys wasting $20 and ten minutes in some hotel room satisfying their most basic desires. To me it is not different that taking a hit of acid or, in my case, guzzling a bottle of vodka. It’s a sign of something else amiss. I am pretty willing to let anybody do what they want in terms of sex. But I draw the line at prostitution, specially when it involves minors. And I do think that the massive acceleration of the porn industry not only shows… Read more »